The Screengrab : bolero

Unwatchable Recap: 91-100

Scott Von Doviak — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 19:00:00 GMT

Welcome to the Unwatchable Halftime Report! Yes, we’ve made it halfway through our journey up the IMDb Bottom 100 list and it’s time to look back at all the good times we’ve had so far. It all began on April 3, 2008, when I reported here on an article from The Guardian by Sam Richards, who subjected himself to a handful of titles from the list he says “exists to catalogue films that have been viewed out of error, obligation or last-turkey-in-the-shop desperation.”

As I said upon launching the Unwatchable project on April 28 of last year, “Any moron can sit through a few of these godawful pictures; it takes a special kind of idiot to watch all 100 of them. And I’m here to tell you, loyal Screengrab readers, I am that idiot. For your entertainment and my own detriment, I am going to watch and review them all, starting with #100 and working my way to the top. Of course, the IMDb list is constantly changing based on the whims of the voting public, but I will be sticking with the Bottom 100 I downloaded on the day I decided to tackle this most awe-inspiring task.”

And it’s true, I am still working from that very list. All this week I’ll be offering you the chance to catch up with Unwatchables you may have missed. I’ve already blocked many of these from my memory, so it should be quite a treat for me, too. Let’s begin with Unwatchables # 91-100!

100. Devil Fish. “A bony dolphin trainer, a beer-swilling scientist and the local sheriff join forces to battle a waterlogged monster that doesn’t actually appear to be much of a shark at all, given that it has tentacles. In a classic case of the cure being worse than the disease, the solution they arrive at is to douse the Everglades with gasoline and set it ablaze with flamethrowers.”

99. The Honeymooners. “Drained of all that hilarious domestic violence humor that might prove upsetting to a modern audience (Ralph’s “To the moon, Alice!” is transformed into a lovey-dovey sweet nothing), The Honeymooners is a decidedly mediocre but good-natured family comedy that has no business being on the Bottom 100 list. Ralph says it best: ‘You just a regular UPN sitcom, huh, Alice?’”

98. Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor. “Of course, this story is only the most threadbare clothesline possible on which to hang as many sessions of roundhouse kicking, neck-snapping and nut-crunching as possible. If you put 100 monkeys in a room with 100 typewriters and asked them all to write a kickboxing movie, 99 of them would come up with this one. But let’s be honest – anyone who watches Kickboxer 4 on purpose is expecting and hoping for only one thing: lots of people getting kicked in the face.”

97. Bolero. “Among its IMDb keywords are ‘Female Nudity,’ ‘Female Frontal Nudity,’ ‘Female Full Frontal Nudity’ and ‘Box Office Flop.’ All of this is accurate.”

96. Track of the Moon Beast. “You might think there’s an unlimited amount of humor to be derived from the story of a man who gets a shard of meteorite imbedded in his skull which causes him to turn into a giant lizard. But you would be wrong.”

95. Marci X. “With its flat television lighting, wokka-wokka music and cast of sitcom actors pitching their performances to the back row of the studio audience, Marci X is a migraine from beginning to end. It’s no wonder Chris Rock rejected it, telling Entertainment Weekly ‘It's the worst script I've ever gotten... I'd have been happier getting an envelope full of anthrax.’ And I’ve seen some of the movies Chris Rock has actually agreed to do, so you know that’s really saying something.”

94. Invasion of the Neptune Men. “The Neptunians – Neptunites? Neptunesians? – emerge from the craft in silvery suits, with slot machines on their heads, and naturally their first impulse is to strangle the small children.”

93. Howling III: The Marsupials. “There’s a bus full of werewolf nuns, a ballet dancer who turns werewolf in mid-performance, a were-skeleton that comes back to life, a leather-boy version of Alfred Hitchcock, a soundtrack full of synthpop power ballads that sound like Beverly Hills Cop rejects, and there’s even Dame Edna, years before her U.S. stardom.”

92. I Accuse My Parents. “This schmuck can’t amuse himself for an hour or so after school, particularly when the hot-to-trot neighbor lady is always dropping by for a drink? It’s about now that we begin to speculate Jimmy may be a little ‘slow.’”

91. Horrors of Spider Island. “Saved from unwatchability by a groovy bikini dance interlude and the exciting conclusion wherein the girls, armed with torches, chase the spider-man into a pit of quicksand. I’ve said it before, but I'll say it again - you just don’t hear much about quicksand anymore.”

In Other Blogs, Starring Roger Ebert as The Phantom

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 16:00:00 GMT

Forget the four decades of movie reviewing, Pulitzer or no. Roger Ebert was clearly put on this earth to blog. His latest entry is a freewheeling reminiscence of his longtime sparring with Gene Siskel as well as a good-humored analysis of his physical appearance, then and now. “What does it feel like to resemble the Phantom of the Opera? You learn to live with it. I've never concerned myself overmuch about how I looked. I got a lot of practice at indifference during my years as the Michelin Man. Yes, years before I acquired my present problems, I was not merely fat, but was universally known as ‘the fat one,’ to distinguish me from ‘the thin one,’ who was Gene Siskel, who was not all that thin, but try telling that to Gene: ‘Spoken like the gifted Haystacks Calhoun tribute artist that you are.’”

Andrew O’Hehir goes Beyond the Multiplex to contemplate the cult of WALL-E. “Like all contemporary parents, I love Pixar, because its movies ingratiate themselves to adults without condescending to children…On the other hand: WTF? WALL-E is a cartoon, dammit. It's a pretty good cartoon, one that blends together a lot of half-baked themes from more serious works of film and literature into a clever pastiche flavored for today's kidult tastes. I liked it fine, and the overreaction in some quarters is not Pixar's or Stanton's fault. But don't insult our intelligence by claiming that it's the best movie of the year or the best animated film ever made or a masterpiece or a mantelpiece. It might be the third-best Pixar movie of the decade. Which, hey, is not nothing.”

Over at The House Next Door, Dan Callahan considers the early work of Carole Lombard. “Even worse than White Woman is Bolero (1934), where Lombard has to try to act and even dance with the wooden George Raft. It’s a dull movie, but it does boast a defining moment for Lombard: she strips down to her slip again, and Raft dares her to dance something for him. Lombard’s face lights up, as if she’s thinking, ‘What the hell,’ (or ‘What the fuck,’ since she was addicted to longshoreman language). She stomps across the screen in her slip and stockings, while Raft and everyone in the audience thinks, ‘This woman must be one of the best lays in the world.’”

At The Auteurs, Glen Kenny wonders whatever happened to James Bond’s sense of humor. “In Dr. No, Connery's Bond was suave and very chilly, his wit exceptionally mordant—as exemplified in the famous kiss-off ‘You've had your six.’ Bond's a little looser in From Russia With Love, and by Goldfinger he's letting the bon-mots fly, from his explanation as to why that brandy is disappointing to his very square observation about how to best listen to the Beatles. But that's not to say that Bond isn't pissed off at the murder of Jill Masterson—he is, and plenty. Here is where the genius of Connery's characterization registers most strongly. Andrew Sarris pegged Connery as a superb physical actor after his purposeful shipboard stride to rescue a near-drowned Tippie Hedren in Hitchcock's Marnie. If, facially and verbally, Connery's Bond gives the impression of a smart cynic, his body language—his bearing, the way he walks, and more—tells a different, more purposeful, story. It's safe to say that no subsequent Bond man, no matter how gifted an actor, ever tried to play that kind of double game.”

And in List-o-Mania this week, Spoutblog offers the 10 Most Accessible Foreign Films of the Last Ten Years, including Lagaan: Once Upon a Time in India. “The running time of 3 hrs. 43 min. probably seems like a deterrent, but this Bollywood film really does feel a lot shorter than it is. Really. And anyway its compelling story of an underdog cricket team is familiar enough that you don’t have to pay too much attention if you don’t have the time — though it will be difficult to let your attention stray except for during some of the less-adequately translated musical numbers that aren’t so significant or relatable to most Western viewers. Just think of this film as your typical Hollywood sports movie, except instead of the final game being quickly highlighted in the last 30 minutes, it’s seemingly depicted in its entirety for more than an hour.”

Unwatchable #81: “Levottomat 3 (Soccer Dog: The Movie)”

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

This entry requires a bit of an explanation. As I’ve mentioned before, the IMDb Bottom 100 list is a fluid entity. There is no single version of this list because you, the loyal bad movie viewer, alter it every time you cast your vote. I am working from a version I downloaded two months ago when I began this project, and although that list may have many crapulescent movies in common with the current version, they may rank higher or lower on the list – and of course, many entries have since been supplanted by fresh, steaming piles from the cineplex.

So why am I telling you this? Well, for the first time since I began the Unwatchable project, a Bottom 100 entry has defeated me. I don’t mean I couldn’t get through the movie – that would be antithetical to everything I stand for – I mean I couldn’t find the movie at all. Number 81 on my list is Levottomat 3, a 2005 Finnish film that, as far as I can tell, has received no U.S. release at all. Believe me, I tried to find it – after all, this is a movie featuring such IMDb keywords as Sex, Sexuality, Sexual Promiscuity, Sex Addiction, Sex in Public, Sex Maniac, Sexual Fantasy, Rough Sex, Casual Sex and even Sex in Bathroom. How bad could it be? Alas, my efforts failed. I was, however, able to track down the trailer, so let’s watch it together, shall we?

So that was fun, but I still owe you good people an installment of Unwatchable. Here’s the solution I came up with: I went to the current version of the Bottom IMDb list and, starting at the bottom, searched until I came across the first entry that did not also appear on the version of the list I’m working from. That movie turned out to be Soccer Dog: The Movie, a 1999 family film that is probably as close to the exact opposite of Levottomat 3 as you can get.

James Marshall, best known as limp noodle James Hurley from Twin Peaks, and Olivia d’Abo, whose nude prancing in Unwatchable # 97 Bolero is forever singed into my cerebral cortex, are a young couple who adopt Clay, a boy who has spent his life in an orphanage. Marshall pushes Clay to join the soccer team, but the lad pretty much stinks at the whole kicking the ball thing. After Clay adopts Lincoln, a mutt who has escaped from the dog pound (see – they’re both orphans!), he is further humiliated to learn the dog possesses much more skill at the soccer arts than he does. In fact, the dog becomes the star of the team and Clay becomes a surly little punk. Tragedy strikes when the evil dog catcher snatches Lincoln, and everyone bonds over his disappearance and vows to get him back.

Soccer Dog obviously isn’t my idea of a good time, but one of the 100 worst movies of all time? Come on. There’s a million family flicks like this – in fact, there’s a whole subgenre of “dogs playing sports” movies like Air Bud and its sequels, and even a Soccer Dog sequel, European Cup. (There’s also the baseball-playing monkey movie Ed, but I have a feeling we’ll be getting to that eventually.) It’s bland, processed entertainment, but it does feature reliable comic actor Sam McMurray as the soccer coach, as well as a dead-on R. Lee Ermey impression by Franklin Dennis Jones as his arch-rival. Granted, I’m not entirely certain why the producers felt the need to append “The Movie” to the title – were they worried audiences would confuse it with Soccer Dog: The Energy Drink? – but that’s a small matter. True, I would have rather been watching the Finnish movie with all the sex maniacs, but I can’t bring myself to give Soccer Dog more than two Maurys.

Previously on Unwatchable:
82. American Soldiers
83. First Sunday
84. It’s Pat
85. Battlefield Earth
86. Hobgoblins

Unwatchable #91: "Horrors of Spider Island"

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 23 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Our fearless – and quite possibly senseless – movie janitor is watching every movie on the IMDb Bottom 100 list. Join us now for another installment of Unwatchable.

So far we’ve encountered the lame (Kickboxer 4), the cheesy (Howling III) and the downright silly (Bolero), but none of the entries to date truly lives up to the moniker Unwatchable. I’m talking cinematic atrocities here, people – no holds barred, claw your own eyes out and pray for death bad. Horrors of Spider Island makes a pretty good run at achieving such status, but falters in the stretch run.

A 1960 German production shot in what was then Yugoslavia (perhaps you know it by the original title Toter hing im Netz, Ein – literally A Corpse Hangs in the Web), Spider Island has little use for the conventions of the horror movie. You know, like scary things happening. The opening music has such a jaunty, cocktail hour vibe you’d think one of the Thin Man movies is starting. The first ten minutes are taken up with a rather free-form audition process as a string of hopeful lasses are paraded through the office of a sleazeball putting together “a dancing troupe tour to Singapore.” Some of the girls are asked to dance, some just stand around, and one takes her clothes off without any prompting. (She’s hired on the spot.)

From the interminable stock footage of airplanes, city skylines and ocean waves that follows, I deduce that the plane carrying the troupe members and their overseer Gary crashes en route to Singapore. The survivors – consisting of Gary and seven screechy women – float to safety on a raft, finding themselves on an unappealing heap of stones covered in scraggly vegetation and featuring the world’s smallest waterfall. Ah, but deep in the woods there is a cabin, and inside the cabin there is – well, there is a dead man hanging in a giant web.

This should be cause for concern, but as a group, the women of Spider Island are far too horny to worry about such trifles. You can certainly understand why they’d be driven mad with passion for the shirtless, barrel-chested Gary, but he only has eyes for good girl Georgia. Well, at first anyway. Once the women start shedding their clothes (accompanied by appropriate bump-n-grind music on the soundtrack) and getting into catfights, it’s more than a red-blooded man can resist. How can he be expected to fend off all these lovelies? When Georgia catches him in a clinch with busty Babs, he rushes off into the woods, howling “This damn heat! I don’t know what I’m doing anymore!” As it turns out, he should have stuck with whatever he was doing, because minutes later he has been attacked by a giant spider-puppet thing, whose bite has transformed him into some sort of, I guess you’d call it, SPIDER-MAN.

I fear this all may sound sort of entertaining, but what with the unsightly visuals, atrocious dubbing (I began to suspect some sort of What’s Up, Tiger Lily? prank) and granny-with-a-walker pacing, I assure you it is not. That is, not until two new arrivals wash ashore. They are Bobby and Joe, assistants to the professor (the dude strung up in the spider web) returning with supplies. Joe is a straightlaced sort, but Bobby is a whiskey-swillin’ sex machine on the make! An island full of scantily clad women is just what the doctor ordered, and Bobby just can’t wait to plow his way through all of ’em. He’s such a loathsome boob, it’s a shame his demise by spider-bite happens offscreen.

Horrors of Spider Island is saved from unwatchability by a groovy bikini dance interlude and the exciting conclusion wherein the girls, armed with torches, chase the spider-man into a pit of quicksand. I’ve said it before, but I'll say it again - you just don’t hear much about quicksand anymore. It was something I used to spend a lot of time worrying about, and all for naught. So far, anyway.

Previously on Unwatchable:

92. I Accuse My Parents
93. Howling III: The Marsupials
94. Invasion of the Neptune Men
95. Marci X
96. Track of the Moon Beast

The Screengrab Highlight Reel: May 3-9, 2008

Scott Von Doviak — Fri, 09 May 2008 21:30:00 GMT

This was the week that was at the Screengrab:

We offered free career advice to the 21st century Steve McQueen and Ali MacGraw, Scarlett Johansson and Ryan Reynolds.

We watched Nicolas Cage, Michael J. Fox and Bruce Willis debase themselves in the Five Most Embarrassing Celebrity Commercials.

We compared two versions of The Thomas Crown Affair, two versions of Lolita, and the two faces of Aaron Eckhart.

We climbed The Towering Inferno and floated down the Apocalypse Now river.

We saw a naked Bo Derek drenched in honey and milk in Bolero, the latest entry in the Unwatchable series of 100 worst movies ever.

We expressed concern for Christina Ricci, hailed Jonathan Pryce and looked forward to seeing Bardot’s ass in high definition.

We told you about the 12 Greatest Movies Based on TV Shows and you told us we forgot about Serenity. Sorry about that.

And finally, we got sweet, sweet revenge.

What a week, no?